


Move, I'm Gay

by ElvaDeath



Series: The World of Asano Gakushuu [11]
Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: 'Am I gay or am I just terrified of girls?', Akabane Karma is a Little Shit, Asano Gakuhou's A+ Parenting, Asano Gakuhou's Bad Parenting, Asano Gakushuu is Bad at Feelings, Asano Gakushuu-centric, Five Virtuosos - Freeform, Five Virtuosos being chaotic, Gakushuu's gay dilemma, MEME night, THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE FINISHED, omg that's finally a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:14:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27421792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElvaDeath/pseuds/ElvaDeath
Summary: Admittedly, telling someone he was gay had not been the smartest move.(Will NOT be completed at any point. I'm publishing what I've written so far, and if anyone wants to take this idea or carry it on, ask me in the comments!)- E.D.
Relationships: Akabane Karma/Asano Gakushuu
Series: The World of Asano Gakushuu [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1657669
Comments: 22
Kudos: 128





	1. Yes Homo

**Author's Note:**

> Not the best thing I've ever written, but here it is. Thought I might as well publish it.
> 
> Enjoy!  
> \- E.D.

Admittedly, telling someone he was gay had not been the smartest move.

Gakushuu groans as yet another text buzzes through his phone, distracting him from his essay on Neolutionism. No one texts him when he’s working, unless it’s Ren and there’s been an emergency. Today is apparently an exception. For the first time in a long while, he reaches over and switches it off completely. There. Blissful silence.

The doorbell rings.

“Christ on a cracker!” He huffs in frustration, shoving his chair away as he stands and storms downstairs. His father will undoubtedly hear him, but in this moment, he does not care in the slightest. No creeping around with silent footsteps, not today. He’s done. He’s officially done.

Unsurprisingly, it’s Ren at the door, with the other three arranged in battle order behind him. “MEME night. Now.”

“No.” He scowls, moving to slam the door closed.

Ren’s foot shoots out, stopping the door from closing. They proceed to have a short battle of wills, which rapidly falls out of his favour when the other three join in.

MEME night it is.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“You will not believe how many people have asked me if you and Karma are dating.” Nat whines, cradling his latest… thing to his chest.

“Who would want to date that psychopath?” Tomoya snorts, in the middle of raiding through the cupboards for actual food. Gakushuu would stop him, considering the housekeeper rarely leaves spare food around, but at least it stops Tomoya from turning to more destructive activities. He will never forget that day that he set Gakushuu’s bedroom on fire when trying to make a matchstick tower. According to him, having the matchsticks on fire in the process only ‘added to the danger rush’. He quickly rescinded his statement when Gakushuu held a white-hot iron rod in front of his eye yelling ‘is this giving you your danger rush?!’.

“Which one is the psychopath?” Teppei snickers, glancing at Gakushuu and going silent at the glare.

“A surprising amount of people do.” Ren sighs from a chair, the only one not intent on ruining Gakushuu’s will to live. “I mean, have you seen his muscles? If you ignore his sadistic tendencies, he is relatively attractive.”

Gakushuu shoots him a glare, resolutely sitting atop his kitchen table.

“I said relatively. No one can be as attractive as you or me.” Ren rolls his eyes. “No homo.”

“Ren!” Teppei gasps, staring at Ren with wide eyes. “You can’t say that! Not now that he’s…”

They all pause, turning to stare at Gakushuu like he’s some sort of museum centerpiece. Lord, give him strength. Gakushuu stares back at them, challenging one of them to speak up. It has to happen at some point. Better sooner rather than later, like ripping a bandage off, right?

“Why didn’t you tell us first?” Nat sniffles from the corner. “I would have supported you! In a totally non romantic way!”

“Nat, I-”

“See, that’s why no one would tell you dipshits anything.” Tomoya interrupts. “The second you know, you all start acting weird! If I was gay, you would be the last people I tell. I’m not gay, by the way. Just saying. No offense, Asano.”

“None taken, Tomoya. Look, this is-”

“Ignoring Tomoya, because he’s just completely contradicted himself, we will be really supportive of you.” Ren cuts him off again. “Why would you tell a random girl before telling us? We’re your only friends. Wait- That came out wrong-”

“Ok, ok, I get what you meant to say. But, seriously, the reason I told-”

“Hey, look, a cat!” Teppei squeaks from the window, adopting his commentator voice. “There he goes, running across the lawn. Oh- there’s a bird! He waits, silent and still, the perfect predator, and- Oh! He pounces, the bird flies up, he jumps… he misses! Hang on, I just had a thought… can cats be gay?”

“Shut up!” Gakushuu snaps, officially at the end of his tether. “I’m not gay!”

Silence. He huffs out a breath of air, cursing his human impulsivity. This really wasn’t the way he saw his Friday night going, especially with his father upstairs. He’s likely listening in to everything they’re saying. Ah, well, the new chairman will have told his father everything anyways, since the entirety of the school’s message board is blowing up with the news. It’s at times like these that he hates being the school celebrity for just existing.

“You’re… not gay?” Nat finally breaks the silence, setting down his bowl of… whatever… and standing. “Then why did you say you were?”

“To stop people asking me out.” He sighs, burying his face in his hands. “Look, perhaps it wasn’t the most intelligent decision, but I can’t keep on doing this.”

Ren settles a hand on his shoulder. Christ, he can practically sense their expressions - pitying, with a touch of exasperation and protectiveness. God knows he’s seen it enough times. Every time he comes out with a memory he probably shouldn’t have - or a lack of a memory that he probably should - they get all weirdly quiet and protective. Comes with having friends, he supposes. His father has always warned him about it. There - if he ever said that, the whole lot of them would start clinging to him like barnacles.

“You know how many girls ask to ‘talk to me alone’, or slip me letters every day.” He mumbles through his hands, thankful that he can only see darkness. Saying what’s on his mind has been getting easier, especially with the therapy his father has ‘encouraged’ him to attend, but there’s always that twinge of anxiety whenever he feels the least bit vulnerable. “Then I have to let them down, and some of them don’t accept it and start arguing, or asking if I’m dating anyone, or they start stalking me, or they start crying and expect me to somehow comfort them when I have no idea what to say… I’m not good at it. I can’t be mean, either. At least Karma can do that.”

“You could have said something. We could have found someone to pretend-date you.” Tomoya makes the table wobble slightly as he sits next to him.

“That’s really not the solution.” Ren deadpans. “But neither was pretending you’re gay.”

“I know. If I hadn’t known when she went white and almost fainted, I knew when I had to literally run from everyone at the gates asking questions.” Gakushuu huffs. “It just… came out.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The girl is pretty, if Gakushuu is being honest. A soft structure, pink lips, sparkling eyes, luscious hair - that sort of thing. The problem is that no matter how attractive she may be, Gakushuu has turned down far better girls than her, and he isn’t feeling inclined to change his mind.

“I know it’s sudden, and we haven’t talked that much, but…” She looks up at him from under her eyelashes, cheeks painted pink. “Please, give me a chance.”

Gakushuu steels himself for yet another session of awkwardly patting a weeping girl on the back. “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel the same way.”

Her face crumples. Here we go. “B-but- I made you a card… and it’s a really nice restaurant… just one night? I know you’re busy, with the work from your dad, but… please? Why not just one night?”

He opens his mouth to shut her down harshly, knowing that’s the only way to keep her from stalking him, but then an idea comes to him. Something that can make them all leave him in peace. Something that will stop the knowing smirk of his father when he comes home with yet another box of chocolates in his bag. Something that will make sure there is no more tight ache in his chest when he has to turn down another girl.

“I’m gay.” He blurts out, schooling his expression into calm indifference and praying she doesn’t call out his blatant lie.

She doesn’t. Her face goes chalk-white, mouth gaping open. For a moment he is worried that she’ll faint and he’ll have to catch her (like one of those cliche princes Ren is obsessed about), but then she lets out a squawk and runs.

Huh.

A few moments later, he walks back into the school, heading to the council room. The hallways are usually quiet at this time of day, the other students out at lunch, but there’s a suspiciously large amount wandering the corridors. Whispering. Giving him wide-eyed looks, but that’s a regular occurrence, so he isn’t too bothered. A group of girls are frantically muttering at the end of the hallway, right by the council room, and he gives them his usual perfect smile before he makes to walk in.

One of them steps out in front of him before he does so, and he sighs inwardly. Great. Another confession.

“Is it true you’re gay?!”

He stares at her, momentarily taken off guard. How quickly does news travel around this place? Had the girl ran into the courtyard and just screamed ‘Asano is gay!’ to the entire school? The image is a little funny to him, considering the amount of discussions that would have erupted along the lines of ‘which Asano’.

“Yes.” He decides, holding himself a little higher. Being gay will just have to be another layer to his mask.

The girls erupt into squeals, gathering together and whirling away again. How bizarre. He supposes they’ll have to rethink their life goals, now that ‘have Asano as a boyfriend’ is not top of their list. Hopefully, it’ll give them an incentive to work harder, focusing on improving their grades.

It doesn’t work like that.

Throughout the rest of the day, none of the class get much work done at all, too busy staring at him and passing notes. His minions (friends, now, they’re friends) glare at him whenever they aren’t trying to maintain order, promising a swift death unless he talks to them soon. He isn’t worried. With professional level defense training under his belt, he can take each of them down as fast as they could draw breath.

Akabane is another issue entirely. He keeps sending Gakushuu weird looks and the occasional wink, having no problem with chucking paper planes at him even when the teacher is staring directly at the devil. Gakushuu throws them all in the bin, sending a curse to Akabane for every one. What a waste of perfectly good paper.

At the end of the day, he is momentarily thankful for the few weeks of sprinting training his father had enrolled him in. He watches the mass of people at the gates, wondering how on earth they can be so invested in this that they will wait the hour it takes him to finish his extracurricular activities. Then again, Tomoya told him he’d discovered a cult worshipping him a few months ago. He really shouldn’t be surprised.

“Ready?” Akabane abruptly appears next to him, hands in his pockets and a mischievous grin on his face.

“For what?” Gakushuu asks warily, ready to duck away if Akabane tries pouring freezing cold water down his neck again.

“This.” The devil smirks, pulling out his phone from his pocket and tapping something on the screen.

The crowd by the gate erupts into shrieks as pops echo around them, followed by a hideous green gas spreading into the air. Gakushuu watches in anguish as the teachers rush out, trying to contain the stampede of students falling over themselves to get away from the foul stink.

“What are you waiting for?” Akabane shoves him forward, eyebrows raised. “Run!”

Gakushuu obeys.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“So… if you’re not gay, are you definitely straight?” Teppei questions after a few minutes of a group hug, Gakushuu practically suffocating in the middle.

“I don’t know.” He mumbles, skin tingling at the sudden contact. Not many people dare to hug him. His father now hugs him occasionally, but it’s stiff and uncomfortable, more out of unspoken obligation than impulsivity. He’s still grateful for it, but that doesn’t mean he has to enjoy every awkward pat on the back. “I haven’t thought about it.”

Nat pulls away, staring at him. “Never? But all those girls who ask you out… I would kill to date one of them!”

“Have you actually dated anyone before?” Tomoya frowns. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you flirt.”

“No.” Gakushuu flushes awkwardly, all too aware that this topic is one of the few that make him sound idiotic. Childhood memories, films, comics, recent trends, flirting - he has no experience with any of them. “With everything I do, do you think I have time to dedicate to one person?”

The unspoken ‘I don’t even have time to dedicate to myself’ hangs in the air, all of them skillfully avoiding it. Their group has become absurdly good at dancing around certain things.

“Does this mean… you’ve never kissed anyone?” Ren says in awe, eyes lighting up in a way Gakushuu isn’t sure he likes.

“Of course.” He tries to sound superior, scoffing at the question, but it brings that familiar feeling that he’s missed a huge part of life he wasn’t aware of. Before MEME nights began, his life and conversations consisted of work and work alone. He isn’t sure what to do with all of these new topics they discuss.

“Nat, put down your cookies and get us a bottle.” Ren smirks, flicking his hair dramatically.

Oh, so that’s what they are. He supposes they do sort of look like cookies, if he squints at them and ignores the suspicious lumps of black.

“On it!” Nat grins, far happier than normal to abandon his horrific creation. Usually, he clings to them in fear that they’ll end up in the bin again. Whatever Ren is planning must be good, if he’s willing to leave them behind.

Predictably, Tomoya scoops up the bowl of cookies and dumps them in the bin. Gakushuu hopes their housekeeper doesn’t think they’re his. Last time he tried baking, he almost broke her favourite jar in frustration. Ever since, she’s always whacked him with a towel anytime he even looks at the kitchen in a certain way.

“Should I get Akabane over? And his blue-haired girlfriend?” Ren muses, rapidly raising the alarm bells in Gakushuu’s mind.

“What? No! I’m not having Akabane in my house.” He hisses. “Also, the blue-haired one is a boy. They’re not dating, he’s with the moviestar.”

“How do you know that?” Teppei pulls out his ever-present notebook and pen. “Did Akabane tell you?”

“No. He never tells me anything about that class.” Gakushuu sighs, scowling. He’s asked countless times for blackmail about his father, but the irritating devil never lets up. It might have something to do with the trauma of being in a class of assassins and having a teacher who blew up the moon, but Gakushuu doesn’t care about that, and he knows Akabane has tough skin. A little trauma hasn’t stopped Gakushuu before, why should it stop Akabane, of all people?

“Done!” Ren slips his phone back into his pocket. “He says he’ll be over in a few minutes. Lucky you live so close together.” He pauses, making a face. “Or maybe not.”

“Ren!” Gakushuu shrieks, launching himself at the pocket after taking a moment to run through every worst case scenario. “I don’t want Akabane in my house! My father’s home!”

The annoying git leaps out of his way, skidding into the living room with Gakushuu in hot pursuit. “So? Your father can stop him if he tries breaking anything.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about!” He barrels over the sofa, swiping a pencil from the coffee table. When Ren glances at him and spots it, his face washes pale and he scrambles away even faster. Clearly he still remembers the time when Gakushuu had listed every way to kill someone with a pencil. Off the top of his head. From a youtube video he’d watched two years prior.

“Stab him!” Tomoya woops, huge grin across his face as he watches the two of them whizz past. “Get him, Asano!”

(“I’ll say… two minutes before he gets him.” Teppei sighs from inside the kitchen.

Nat stares into the bin at his discarded cookies. “I’m going for forty seconds. It’s about Akabane.”)

Ren sprints to the stairs, taking them two at a time, just as Gakushuu swings over the banister, another pencil between his teeth. 

“What is the meaning of this?” A cold voice freezes them both in their tracks, Gakushuu’s hand an inch from the back of Ren’s collar.

“H-hello, Chairman.” Ren stutters, gulping and trying to pretend he hadn’t been tearing through the house three seconds before.

“Father.” Gakushuu slips the pencils away, back straightening. Self-consciously, he checks that his posture is intact and his face is unaffected. Then he remembers the therapist talking about ‘not hiding himself’ and he forces his face to relax again, even though it makes a corner of his mind whisper ‘weak weak weak weak weak’.

The man stands just outside of his study, suit immaculate and expression unimpressed. “Ren Sakakibara. You still work hard, I hope?”

Of course his father would ask that first. Work, work, work. No wonder Gakushuu can’t ever relax unless he’s in the middle of doing schoolwork or distracted by his friends.

Ren only nods, staring up at Gakushuu’s father with wide, uncertain eyes. For all his whispered talk of taking Gakushuu away from the Chairman, he never seems to hold his nerve when confronted with the man in flesh. Gakushuu is not surprised. He’d be terrified too. He still is terrified sometimes, when the years of training himself to be numb fall away briefly.

“Good.” His father nods, and for a moment Gakushuu is convinced that he will leave them alone and his heart can stop threatening to beat out of his chest. “Asano. A word in my office.” Life is never that simple.

“As you wish, father.” He starts up the staircase again, knowing without looking that Ren’s face has twisted into that damn look again. “Please wait in the kitchen, Ren, I’ll be down shortly.”

Then, as though the angels have taken pity on him, the doorbell rings.


	2. Let’s go, lesbians, let’s go!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two, the last long chapter left. The next one is like... five hundred words or something, which is barely anything, so savour this one if you like this!
> 
> Enjoy!  
> \- E.D.

His father… (hesitates? No, that word wouldn’t describe him. His father never hesitates, not even when the boy on the floor is begging for him to stop, not even when there’s blood everywhere-) pauses, glancing at the front door. Gakushuu watches him, eyes occasionally flicking to Ren as the moment stretches out into eternity. Eventually, his father sighs, carrying on. “Perhaps later. Before your breakfast tomorrow morning. 6:15 sharp.”

Gakushuu dares not sigh in relief, knowing that a single breath is all it could take for a change in his mind. “Yes, father.”

The door to the study closes behind him, and the breath comes out in a whoosh along with Ren’s.

“I’d forgotten how…” Ren copies his father’s expression as best he can, exaggerating the thin lips and narrowed eyes. “... he was. How on earth can you live with him?”

Gakushuu tactfully glides past Ren to the door as the bell rings again, avoiding the question. It isn’t something Ren needs to worry about. His therapist claims it will help to talk about it, but Gakushuu knows from experience that bringing his friends into his family life is only asking for trouble. (How can he forget their dead eyes, shaking limbs, spewing words they only half understand, his father’s influence crawling in their bodies and moving them like corpses-)

“Second place!” Akabane launches forward, arms wide open as though he expects a hug. Gakushuu side steps as the idiot actually attempts it. “You invited me to your house? In the dead of night? What would our parents say?!”

“It’s 5 o’clock, and my father would kick both of us out of the house in body bags.” He deadpans. “Plus, you can go home now. It was Ren.”

“Hi, Akabane.” Ren avoids Akabane’s flailing limbs as the struggle to avoid being hugged continues. “Did you invite anyone else?”

“Only a few girls from my old class and Nagisa, but he’s a little busy and only one girl thought I was being serious. So- mmf!” He stumbles back as Gakushuu’s hand squashes his face away, words devolving into muffled yells.

“Who?” Tomoya wanders over, having successfully avoided his father’s attention completely. “Is it one of the pretty ones?”

“Sexist!” A girl steps into the house, blonde hair pulled up into a ponytail and blue eyes taking in the entranceway. “Holy shit, I didn’t actually think he was being serious. Damn, Asano, no wonder you have a cult worshipping you. Your house is massive, and if my theory about houses being as big as the owner’s-”

“Rio!” Akabane manages to free himself from Gakushuu’s defensive chokehold long enough to stop her. “This is Rio Nakamura. You might remember her from-”

“Finals.” Tomoya scowls, folding his arms. “English. She stole my top spot.”

Oh, great. Gakushuu knew this was a terrible idea.

“Jeez, don’t be so salty about it.” Rio rolls her eyes, still looking around. “You assholes asked for it, anyway, didn’t you, Asano?”

This is officially the worst idea Ren has ever come up with.

“Why did you invite these two cretins here?” Gakushuu turns to Ren, praying that they’ll have the tact to ignore the question. No such luck.

“What does she mean?” Nat throws Rio a dirty look as he and Teppei emerge from the kitchen, one holding a bottle and the other a bin with cookies inside. You can guess which had which.

As for his question… well. He hadn’t been expecting Class 3-E to truly beat them, not by a long shot, but just to give them a challenge that will make his father rethink things. He knew what the other four would say about it, so he kept quiet. That request was supposed to stay between him and Class 3-E. Past him had never anticipated a situation like this.

Past him had never thought his father would react in such a way, and make the situation a serious sore point for his friends.

“I am sure she simply means our insults towards them.” He smiles politely at Rio, daggers in his eyes. “No doubt they took such things personally, having grown fragile in their… environment. Having a murderous creature for a teacher must wear on one's nerves, especially for those that belonged to E class.”

He’d gone too far. The words would have been appropriate a few months ago, when they were still ‘E class’ and he was still ‘A class’, but now he is supposed to be removing those class barriers and becoming neutral, if not friendly. Allowing Akabane to accompany him from school had been one of these things.

By the sharp grin that Akabane now wears, that arrangement has just been thrown out of the window.

“You want to test that theory?” Rio steps forward, eyes murderous and a hand sneaking into her pocket.

Immediately, Tomoya, Nat, and Teppei gather behind Gakushuu, and it almost feels to him like the old days. Except for Ren, who stands in the middle with a conflicted expression. He had always felt uncomfortable insulting them so ruthlessly.

“Wow, look at you, good old Fab Five.” Akabane snorts, and if Gakushuu didn’t know him so well by now, he would think that the comment is just another joke. But he does, and he can see the narrowing of his eyes, and the curl of his lip, and his chin tilting downwards. He shouldn’t have brought up the teacher, that was one of the worst things he could do around Akabane.

“I’m not surprised you’d start threatening me the minute you step in my house.” Gakushuu starts, and he wishes he could stop, but now he’s panicking and the words just keep flowing out. “Once a delinquent, always a delinquent.”

“Don’t know how Karma can stand to be in the same class as you.” Rio hisses, shoving her face in Gakushuu’s. “Not only do you constantly have a stick up your ass, but your daddy issues stick out like a sore thumb. Did he not pat you on the head enough when you were younger?”

His friends join in at that, yelling angrily, spewing insults and empty threats as the situation spirals, but all he can hear is buzzing. No one has ever gone that far. In school, there was the risk of expulsion for bad-mouthing the Chairman. Outside of school, Gakushuu never spoke to anyone who wasn’t his friends, and if he did, they weren’t E class. He wonders why he’s so affected. He knows his father has broken him in ways he can never fix, but hearing it out loud in the way she says it… it hurts.

“Woah, woah, that’s enough!” Ren. “Everyone needs to calm down! The Chairman might hear us.”

The group silences, all eyes turning to the staircase.

He already has, Gakushuu wants to say. He hears everything, all the time, and nothing you do can ever be a secret from him.

That would earn him more of those looks, so he stays quiet, and tries to listen.

“We’re all a little on edge, ok?” Ren moves to stand between Gakushuu and Rio, one hand reaching out to grab Gakushuu’s arm, even though he hasn’t moved. It helps ground him a little, though, so he doesn’t slap it away. “First time seeing each other after everything, and Gakushuu coming out as gay… It’s understandable.”

“Wait, what?” Rio stares at him, aggression gone in an instant to be replaced with shock. “You’re gay?”

He blinks at her, words breaking apart in his mind, in his throat. There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence, and Gakushuu wishes he wasn’t so fragile. For all he says about being the strongest one there, his mind feels like a boat in violent storms on some days, and her words have whipped the wind up again, leaving him tossed around and exhausted.

“No.” Ren says after a moment, making Rio look even more baffled. Akabane turns to stare at him, an odd expression (confusion? disappointment?) written over his face. “It’s a long story. So if you’re all done acting like children (“We are children, technically.” “Shut up Teppei.”) let’s go into the living room and do what you two were invited here for.”

With that, he flicks his hair dramatically and pulls Gakushuu away, hand firm but gentle on his arm. Gakushuu doesn’t resist. He doesn’t think he can, even though he’s slowly coming back to himself.

“What were we invited for, anyway?” Akabane drawls, hands stuffed in his pocket as the small troupe follows them. “All you said was ‘come to Asano’s house and bring friends’.”

“I still can’t believe you’re close enough that Karma didn’t take that as a ‘come to the house so we can murder you and your friends’.” Rio shakes her head in awe. “Actually, I’m more surprised that he knows your address and your house hasn’t been burnt to the ground.”

“You forget…” Nat points above them ominously.

“If someone tried to burn this house down, the principal would strip them of everything they owned and talk to them enough that they’d be committed to a mental institution.” Tomoya adds, voice low.

Rio snickers, clearly not seeing how serious Tomoya is. “He can try.”

“If talking is all it takes, how come our beloved second place is still here?” Akabane leans forward and ruffles Gakushuu’s hair.

Usually, he’d shove him away, snarling. Usually, they’d start a fight that would break everything in sight. Now is not usual. Gakushuu just glances at him, frowns, and looks away again, his body moving on autopilot. All the talk of his father has let him float again, too tired to distract them with another topic or try and hide how each word makes him shiver. He wants to be alone, now, so that they can’t see how far he’s drifted. He has a reputation to uphold.

It’s too late. Akabane is staring at him, unnerved by the half hearted response. He’s said something, probably. Gakushuu should respond.

“What?” He bites out.

“Are you okay?” Akabane moves forward to stare into his face, Ren pulling Gakushuu away from him protectively.

“I’m fine.” He is. He’s fine, it’ll end soon.

There’s a pause as everyone exchanges glances. Rio hasn’t noticed anything, as she’s staring more at the others than at Gakushuu, clearly trying to work out why they’ve all stopped.

“See. Talking is all it takes.” Tomoya scowls, turning away and marching the last few steps to the sofa. “He’s not here at all.”

Gakushuu tries to dig through his brain for what on earth his friend means, but the last few seconds are foggy in his head and he might as well be searching for a pen mark on a blank page.

Akabane looks around at the four boys, who all have that damn look on their faces again, and back to Gakushuu, who stares back as defiantly as his mind will let him. He seems lost for words, mouth half open. This should be the part where he makes a lighthearted jab at Gakushuu, and Gakushuu returns it, and then they aren’t so awkwardly quiet. Instead, Akabane reaches forward, ruffles Gakushuu’s hair again, and walks over to sit in front of the fireplace.

Gakushuu should feel more annoyed. In fact, he should be fuming. In that split second, Akabane had shared that stupid look that the rest of his friends had, the one which means that Gakushuu is stupid and broken and weak and doing something wrong. He must have accidentally shown how much of a car crash he is, born weak and fragile and smashed up more by his father, and now Akabane knows and he’ll act all protective around Gakushuu, and all of the competition will be gone. He doesn’t want that. Sometimes, fighting with Akabane is the only thing that makes him feel truly alive. If it’s gone, he’ll be a ghost again on those days.

He finds he doesn’t feel anything about it. His mind is gone, and so are his emotions, and his corpse follows Ren and lets him push Gakushuu down onto an armchair.

The group talks. He tries to keep up, but the world falls like sand through his fingers and his eyes stare blankly at his father’s favourite vase on the mantelpiece. He knows it’s his favourite because he almost broke it when he was nine, play fighting with Ren, and had been told this fact after five hours straight of bruising training for defensive fighting. If he can’t contain a fight well enough to protect one measly vase, he must be weak. He thinks back to when he snapped a chair leg attacking Akabane the other week. Nothing has changed.

Ren sits in front of him at some point, head resting against Gakushuu’s legs. He can feel it, Ren’s beautifully maintained hair pressed against his trouser legs, but the sensation doesn’t feel as loud as it was before. It’s simply there.

Nat hands out a fresh batch of cookies at some point, which the group diligently eats. Gakushuu watches Rio turn green and rush to the toilet, leaving the others to reassure Nat the food was lovely (they spit their mouthfuls in the bin once he’s gone to clean the kitchen).

The group are laughing when he returns fully, a recount of Gakushuu’s first visit to the zoo leaving Akabane in hysterics. He can recall the time, the wonder and excitement and mild terror at all of these animals much larger and more real than they’d ever been in textbooks or on screens. His mouth twitches upwards as Teppei reads quotes from him from his notebook.

“Get this, get this -- ‘Of course monkeys can understand humans. Watch this.’ Then he spends twenty five minutes talking to this monkey sitting by the fence, trying to convince it to do a handstand.”

“You should have seen the zookeeper’s face!” Nat giggles.

“No, no, you should have seen the monkey’s face!” Ren grins. “It looked like christmas had come early, with all of the food Gakushuu was giving it!”

Tomoya coughs, adopting Gakushuu’s slightly-ticked-off smile, his voice flattening out and hissing between his teeth. “‘Two more for standing up, and another four if you finish the job and do the handstand. Yes? No, no, let go of my hair!’”

“Priceless!” Akabane rolls around on the carpet, clutching his stomach. “He should start a circus! Gakushuu and his monkeys with their handstands - no guarantees on either making an appearance!”

“He even started showing the monkey how to do it!” Teppei adds. “God, if he wasn’t amazing at handstands and held it for five full minutes, I would have just fallen over laughing right there!”

“To be fair,” Gakushuu speaks up, watching as they all scramble to stare at him. “I did make it do a handstand.”

“Only after you talked your way into the enclosure and literally held it upside down.” Ren snorts. “I think I’ve got a picture of it at home.”

“Monkeys all over him, in his hair and everything.” Tomoya shakes his head. “I swear one peed on him at some point.”

“It did make a great publicity stunt - #monkeytrainingwithgakushuu trended for at least a month.” Teppei flips his notebook closed. “We used it to raise a hundred million yen for a charity which protects endangered monkeys around the world, but that’s besides the point.”

“Speaking of.” Ren turns to look at him. “Loads of LGBTQ+ groups are reaching out for you to work with them. If you’re keeping the gay thing, you’ll have to fully commit.”

“Wait, wait.” Rio waves her hands, catching their attention. “Ok, I’m still confused about this. You said you were gay because… you don’t want girls liking you? Doesn’t that just mean you’re actually gay?”

“I’m not gay.” Gakushuu sighs as the group sobers. “It’s not that I don’t find them attractive, it’s that I don’t want every day to be full of crying girls who hate me a little more.”

“You make it sound like you’re constantly having to fight off a swarming mass of demon girls.” Akabane rolls his eyes. “There’s not that many, and they aren’t that bad. I’m far better than you, and I don’t get a million a day.”

“Uh, no offense, but it’s because you’re kinda scary.” Nat squeaks, bin still clutched to his chest. 

Akabane turns to snarl at him. “I’m not that bad. I’m the bad boy type.”

“The bad boy with full intention to kill type, you mean.” Rio throws a cushion at him. “You’re hot, but not hot enough for a girl to risk certain death.”

Teppei ducks under the cushion that sails back. “Besides, we are basically fighting off a swarming mass of demon girls all the time. You know how many times a day I have to scour the web for dodgy sites about him? God, the photoshops are so bad. There was a period of time where pictures of him through his bedroom window were spread all over the place. I almost bleached my eyes.”

“There was?” Gakushuu blinks at him, surprised by this revelation. Yes, he’d stopped asking Teppei for updates about this topic after he’d seen the creepiest poem ever written about him, but he had expected anything that big to be brought up. Not about privacy - with his father, privacy was a concept he’d abandoned years ago - but about his reputation. If that had been brought onto the radar of the more respectable public, that sort of publicity would go on his permanent record.

“We didn’t want to worry you.” Tomoya shrugs, like hiding the fact he’d been stalked to his house was a normal thing to do for a friend. “You had the whole maths championship going on at the time.”

“Ok, creepy much.” Rio wrinkles up her nose. “I gotta warn you, some people don’t take sexuality as a barrier. There’ll still be girls wanting to ‘convert you’ or some bullshit. You know, when Karma-”

“Are we actually going to talk about why we’re here?” Akabane interrupts, poking Ren’s leg.

“Right.” Ren smiles, flicking his hair. “To summarise our earlier conversation; Gakushuu has never kissed anyone. Therefore, we need to broaden his horizons. The obvious conclusion was drawn. Teppei?”

Gakushuu tenses as Teppei holds up the empty bottle they’d retrieved from the kitchen. “Spin the bottle!”

There’s a cheer, and as ignorant as Gakushuu is about what on earth that actually means, he isn’t stupid enough to ignore the glint in everyone’s eye. This means trouble.


	3. I Thought You Were American

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! This is all I’ve written. Have fun. Oh, and you can look forward to a spoopy artsy type new fanfic coming soon, as well as a Klaus x Dave one shot if you’re into TUA.
> 
> Enjoy!  
> \- E.D.

“No.”

“Oh, come on! Don’t be such a killjoy!”

“Absolutely not.”

“This is for your own good!”

“My own good? Being tormented about this for the rest of my life is not for my own good.”

“It’ll be fun!”

“That’s the weakest persuasive technique I’ve learnt. Try harder.”

“You have to do whatever dare he sets you if you refuse.”

Gakushuu narrows his eyes, contemplating this. Whatever dare Akabane sets will be traumatic, no doubt, but will kissing him actually be much better?

“I can tell you from experience, he’s not actually a bad kisser. You might even enjoy it.” 

Teppei flips his notebook open with a grin, scribbling something down. “Next headline: Two Demons Kiss, The World Ends Without Us Noticing.”

“Which demon is the second one?” Tomoya snickers, waving a breadstick between Rio and Gakushuu. Gakushuu glares at him. Tomoya drops the breadstick, curses, and hurriedly tries to clean cream cheese from a cushion.

“Regardless,” Gakushuu sighs, “I have to ask whether this is truly necessary. Will my life be much impacted if I simply walk away and refuse to do either of these things?”

“Yes.” Akabane pulls up a picture, making Teppei pale. “You do the game, or this goes all over the internet.”

“Blackmail.” Gakushuu’s eye twitches. He hates being on the receiving end of his own persuasion techniques. “Very well. Once I complete the game, you shall hand your phone to Teppei for the total removal of that photo. Deal?”

“Deal.” Akabane agrees easily, sliding the horrific photo of Gakushuu asleep into his pocket to shake hands.

Rio shakes her head, looking between the two of them. “Have I died and gone to hell?”

“No.” Nat says. “Wait an hour, and they’ll be at each other’s throats again.”

Ignoring that obvious statement, Gakushuu focuses solely on Akabane as he slides closer, an unnaturally intense edge to his gaze. He’s rarely ever been this serious before, and never about something so simple as this. The smirk is still there, but it’s smoothed out, more reassuring than mocking. Now he’s so close, Gakushuu can see the dip where his dimple forms, and he can’t help but notice a tiny freckle by Akabane’s ear. Neither can he ignore the way Akabane’s eyebrows do a slight upward flick at the end, or the sharp line of his jaw, or the curled length of his dark eyelashes, or the half-lidded gaze of his golden eyes, or the light dancing over his cheekbones, or the minute twitching of Akabane’s soft lips, getting steadily closer.

Or the sudden curl of heat in his stomach.

Gakushuu leans back at the last minute, inhaling sharply. What was that? Why did that just happen? Why is his stomach burning? Is he about to be sick?

“Gakushuu?” Ren touches a gentle hand to his arm, face questioning. All of them are looking at him now. Akabane has sat back again, a hidden layer of hurt under the raised eyebrow.

“Excuse me.” Gakushuu hurries to say, pushing himself to his feet and shooting for the bathroom, blocking out the stares from his mind. They let him go.

The bathroom door clicks shut on the low murmuring, leaving Gakushuu in relative quiet as he grips the sides of the sink tightly. Lord have mercy, he keeps acting so fragile and breakable and disturbed tonight that his friends are going to wonder why he’s their leader at all. They already pity him. He’s becoming a glass figurine to them. No good leader is made of glass. No one follows a fragile figure. They want to see strength, and if he doesn’t show them strength, he is going to lose their support and be left all alone to struggle through years of bullying until he decides one day it isn’t worth it because he’s so fragile and breakable and weak and he will walk to that bridge and he will-

He won’t.

Breathe.

In.

Out.

Gakushuu rubs at his eyes, sinking to the floor. Every human is weak sometimes, and that is ok. It’s ok. He just has to keep telling himself that until he believes it.

Sort things through, assess it properly, don’t make assumptions.

Number one. He has told everyone he is gay in some mad attempt to throw people off. He will have to keep up the charade for a- He doesn’t have to keep it up if he doesn’t want to, it is his choice. He doesn’t have to pretend for other people’s sake. He is still a teenager, he can make mistakes sometimes, and he will not ruin himself for it.

Number two. He has drifted in front of his friends, Akabane, and Rio. They will think him wea- They won’t think him weak. Not everyone is conditioned like Gakushuu to define everyone by ‘weak’ and ‘strong’. They will likely only think him a little strange, but have any of them ever made fun of him for it? No. Have they treated him differently? Yes, but they have continued to follow him and believe in him.

Number three. Akabane almost kissed him, and he felt… something. Heat in his stomach. Not sickness, he hasn’t felt the urge to throw up. Not pain, nothing was touching his stomach. An emotion? Possibly. A likely probability. More research required.

Gakushuu shifts to lean against the bath, pulling out his phone.

‘Heat in stomach emotion’ he types into google.

‘Fear and disgust’ comes up, along with a few diagrams. Gakushuu nods, adding a note into his online diary. It makes sense. Akabane has always been his worst enemy, so of course he’d feel fear and disgust at almost kissing him.

Besides, google is always right. Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of an abrupt ending, but I did what I could to wrap it up and leave it open-ended too.
> 
> (I think I may be projecting too much on my characters-)


End file.
